Oleander Time
by wildskysong
Summary: "Today Patrick Jane goes to trial."  Teresa Lisbon, fire, and white oleander, the longest summer of her life.  SPOILERS for Strawberries and Cream, speculation for next season.  Slow-burning Jane/Lisbon.


**So I apparently can't stop writing Mentalist. **

**Damn it, Jane. **

**Lisbon and the longest summer. **

**Disclaimer: I don't own The Mentalist. I want to, but sadly I do not. Damn. **

* * *

><p>Oleander Time<p>

* * *

><p>"<em>Oleander time," she said. "Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind." <em>–Ingrid Magnussen, _White Oleander_

* * *

><p>September rolls around and the air itself is burning. The Santa Anas sweep through Sacramento like hot-tongued tigers, roaring and howling in the alleyways.<p>

Lisbon feels the heat rattle the windows, slide its claws along them, demanding entrance.

She won't let it in.

It's dark, night sprawled heavy overhead. Clouds thick like whipped cream block the stars. The hills glow faintly, fire-tipped, and the Santa Anas drive the flames towards the city.

Sirens wail and flash blue-red.

Heat rises, palpable, and Lisbon feels sweat crawl up her back.

The wind howls and rattles the windows. The fire in the fields roars and swallows brittle grass, devours limb, broken trees, burns the oleanders to a crisp.

There, gone. Grass and leaves and flowers, vanishing, smoke on the wind. So fast.

Lisbon closes her eyes and listens to the tiger growl of the Santa Anas. Her shoulder hurts. O'Laughlin's face is stamped against her eyelids, coughing blood red as roses.

She wonders how Van Pelt is holding up.

Idly, she twists the crucifix hanging around her neck.

Hail Mary, full of Grace. Was it really only four months ago that she had a bomb strapped to her chest and a voice whispering to her over the phone?

Four months since her greatest problem was that hideous dress?

Four months since hot gunshot wounds and surgeries, since deep drugged sleep and waking up to find everything irreparable and shattered?

The Santa Anas roar and drag their tiger claws down the window. It's three AM, September 22, 2011. Lisbon's shoulder hurts and the air tastes like ash in her mouth.

She opens her eyes.

Today Patrick Jane goes on trial.

* * *

><p>Lisbon woke up in the hospital and Cho was at her side.<p>

Only Cho.

"Cho," she rasped, and his face was carved from stone.

"Boss."

Something was wrong. She struggled to sit up, ignoring the pain in her shoulder. She couldn't move her hand. O'Laughlin was—had been—a good shot. Her rotor cuff was in shreds, her clavicle in shards. She was looking at months of therapy.

That's what the doctors had told her as they rushed her into the OR. Then she passed out.

"Cho," she said. Her tongue was heavy and hot in her mouth. "What's wrong?"

Cho looked her dead in the eye.

"It's Jane," he said. "He's killed a man."

* * *

><p>Four months. That's it. Four insignificant, fire-drenched months.<p>

Could that really be it? Could everything change like that, in a heartbeat, like trees going up in flames?

A bottle of Percocet lies unopened on the table next to half-eaten pizza and Chinese food. A teacup, blue like a robin's egg, sits perched on the edge of a folding desk. A makeshift bed lies unmade on top of crates. A journal filled with familiar slanting scrawl sits abandoned on the floor, its covers open like broken wings. A vase full of oleanders, petals gone limp and sad, stands forgotten and starving in a corner.

A fine layer of dust covers the room and she watches the fires glow on the horizon and the sirens, blue and red, wail through the city.

The CBI building is quiet.

Lisbon stares at the burning world outside the window and sees O'Laughlin's face, wide-eyed as he falls, and Van Pelt's, shattered like the whole world was ashes at her feet.

Four months.

That's all it took for the world to burn down.

* * *

><p>Rigsby didn't visit until two days later. Cho stayed with her, faithful, steady Cho. Everything was a blur, a haze of pain and morphine and <em>oh, Jane, damn it, Jane. <em>

(She, when she slept at all, dreamed dreams smeared rose red and robin's egg blue, laughing faces and sharp eyes.)

Rigsby came on the third day, tired and pale and older than he'd ever been. He'd been with Van Pelt the whole time, holding her hand, her fragile, shell-shocked body.

She wasn't doing so well, he said. He was worried about her.

"Give her time," Cho said. "It'll get better."

Lisbon turned her head and stared at the bright world outside the window. Things were bad if Cho was the optimist.

When she closed her eyes, she saw red and blue dance together, and Jane smiled at her and raised a gun to her chest.

* * *

><p>Bam. Bam. Bam.<p>

Three shots. That's all it took.

* * *

><p>Van Pelt finally came on the fifth, and last, day of Lisbon's stay at the hospital.<p>

She looked bad. Her hair was lank and her eyes were dark as bruises, peering from sunken sockets like startled animals.

Craig O'Laughlin was buried yesterday in a suit and tie, his FBI badge and a handful of white oleanders on his chest and a necklace looped through his fingers. All his family and friends had come out, dozens of people lamenting the loss of such a fine, upstanding young man.

They were not told how he died nor that the one who killed him stood beside his casket in a black dress, her hair cascading down her back like fire.

Van Pelt said that Red John won O'Laughlin over with money. Lots and lots of money. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, she said, found in an offshore account under a dead man's name.

Five hundred thousand dollars.

Enough to turn a good cop bad, a servant of the law into a servant of a monster. Enough to make a man light a match and, holding another's wide, startled eyes, to set a fire that swallowed flesh and hair in a heartbeat.

Five hundred thousand dollars to look into Grace Van Pelt's eyes and make love to her, skin slick with sweat and promises lying bare on top of the mattress, secrets peeled from the heart easily as skin from bone.

Lisbon held Van Pelt's hand and the younger woman cried great, heaving sobs, so hard that Lisbon was sure her ribs would crack under the weight of them.

"I loved him," Van Pelt said helplessly. "I loved him so much."

"I know," Lisbon said softly, closing her eyes. "I'm so sorry."

Funny how everything changes with a gunshot.

* * *

><p>The Santa Anas haven't come to Sacramento in a long time. They're worse in the south and the north, Lisbon knows. The hills burn in Los Angeles and up in San Fran the fog wraps itself tight around the harbor, trying to choke the life out of the people. Sacramento feels them, of course, but not like this, never like this.<p>

Lisbon wonders if Jane ever stood on his porch in Malibu, his wife and daughter sleeping upstairs, and tasted the hot tiger air and watched the horizon glow. Did he see the flames in the distance? Did he hear them roar and crackle, imagine them sweeping down and taking his family, sending them up in an instant, fast as they laid hillsides bare and swallowed forests whole?

Or did he, in typical Jane fashion, smell the hot wind and embrace it, look forward to the thrill of the flames, of racing them towards the ocean, the fire licking his heels as he plunged, victorious into the foam?

Did he, with the night heavy and smoke-filled above him, go out into the forests and run his fingers through the ashes of the oleanders and read fortunes of death and life among them?

Did he hold is daughter's hand and point to the hills, whispering fairy tales of dragons and phoenixes and fire-elves, things born and alive in the flame, watching her eyes light with wonder?

"There's nothing to be afraid of," he might have said, in his gentle tiger-rough voice. "It's only the dragons playing, the phoenixes shedding this life for the next, the fire-elves dancing, worshiping the moon."

Did he, even for a second, think the fire would reach him, would one day beat him to the ocean and swallow him whole, strip his flesh from his bones and leave him to the tiger tongues of the Santa Anas, food for vultures and flies?

No, probably not. Back then, Patrick Jane played with fire and didn't even think once that it, his sharp-tongued, brilliant friend, would go behind his back and burn his home down while he stared at the elves dancing in the hills.

He didn't think anything would hurt him, until it did.

* * *

><p>The month after her release from the hospital was long and Percocet-blurry. She slept all the time in a haze of golden dust, popping a pill whenever the pain got too bad.<p>

Cho came by a lot, took care of her. He brought her food, helped her to the bathroom, took her to physical therapy, and watered the oleanders.

Cho was always there, hovering on the edges of her vision.

"It'll get better," he kept saying. "We just have to wait it out."

The hole in her shoulder burned and throbbed and Jane and O'Laughlin danced on the backs of her eyelids, their guns raised, smiling.

_It'll get better. _

Hail Mary, full of Grace.

Yeah, right.

* * *

><p>When she was a little girl, Lisbon watched the Santa Anas bring fire down around their little home. She'd been five or six at the time and her mother was still alive. She remembered the glowing hills and the hot, growling wind ruffling her hair, the smell of ash and oleander dancing on her tongue.<p>

In those days, they kept everything important to them in her mom's beige minivan and her dad's green pickup, ready to move, to run at the first hissing pop of the flames.

Their house never caught fire but the hillside three hundred feet away did. She remembered the flames, so hot they were blue, swallow her tree house and the pines and the oaks, and her father slinging her over his shoulder and throwing her in the truck, the tires squealing out and away from the hungry, roaring heat.

She looked back only once and her mother's oleanders were gone and the willow tree was on fire, its long, spindly branches waving madly as if to beat out the flames.

* * *

><p>The second month was worse. She stopped taking Percocet. Not because they stopped writing her a prescription—a shredded rotor cuff pretty much guaranteed her drugs for six months—but because Cho looked at her like he was disappointed, and she realized enough was enough.<p>

So the Percocets went away.

Opiate withdrawal was a bitch. For days she did nothing but sweat and thrash in her bed, itching to take the innocent little pills. The pain in her shoulder doubled, tripled, made her head swim and ghosts dance on the walls—

(Her mother in a red dress, singing along to the radio, an oleander in her hair.

Her father in red firelight, bottle dangling from his fingers.

O'Laughlin, eyes wide, gun steady in his hand.

Sam Bosco laughing, a sandwich halfway to his mouth.

And Jane with his grin and his eyes gone vivid blue and cracked, a smoking gun cradled in his hands.)

He shot a man in cold blood. Dozens of witnesses saw him, standing inches away from a normal-looking, harmless older man and shoot him three times in the chest, a gun hidden in his pocket.

Jane, a cold-blooded killer.

He said the man he shot was Red John.

Lisbon didn't know if that was true or not, and the world swam and danced and burned, the fires of California reflected on her bedroom wall.

* * *

><p>"I want to cut him open," Jane said once, his eyes deadly serious and the color of the sky. "And watch him die slowly."<p>

"And then I'll arrest you," Lisbon said back. "Red John will go to trial."

He'd smiled then, hard and cruel like a tiger, and they had both known that Red John would never, ever make it to trial.

* * *

><p>The Serious Crimes Unit is taken off rotation. LaRoche may be many things but cruel is not one of them—he sees that they are broken, on fire, and gives them the summer off. Rigsby and Cho are temporarily assigned to different units. Rigsby goes on loan to Sac PD and Cho goes to Gang Crimes, and Lisbon is put on sick leave and Van Pelt is given personal time.<p>

Patrick Jane is still on the payroll. Bertram wanted to take him off of it, but LaRoche and Minelli (that one was a surprise, Minelli) shut him down.

Bertram called Lisbon, during the first month, asking her opinion.

Lisbon stared at the phone and let it ring.

And ring.

And ring.

After a week, he stopped calling.

* * *

><p>She gets better. Physical therapy starts to pay off. She gets the use of her fingers back, and most of her arm. She can't raise her arm above her head, though, and the doctors say she never will.<p>

As soon as she's able, Lisbon goes to the shooting range and empties her weapon over and over and over, the gun shuddering in her hands.

She clusters three shots in a cardboard cutout's abdomen, one for each bullet Jane shot into the man he called Red John.

She traces the neat holes with her fingers.

Was it really this easy?

* * *

><p>Hightower dropped by once. She was cleared of all crimes and the FBI had approached her, offering her a position as head of Serial Crimes.<p>

She thought she was going to take it.

Hightower and Lisbon sat together in her cramped apartment and watched the news in silence. It was Hightower who spoke first.

"Have you been to see him?"

Lisbon watched the news anchor talk, listened to his reports of rapists and killers and gang wars. "No," she said.

Hightower understood. "He says he got the right man," she ventured. "He's sure of it."

Peter Holbrook. Age 51. Film director. Husband. Member of Hollywood's upper class. Patron of the theater. Red John?

"He did the right thing," Hightower said. "I'm sure of it."

"Good bye," Lisbon said, and showed Hightower out the door.

* * *

><p>Hail Mary, full of Grace. Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.<p>

* * *

><p>The oleanders smell like summer, like heat and haze and changing things. Cho waters them for her and Lisbon stares at them and remembers the flowers in her mom's garden, lightning-white, catching flame one by one and burning, the air hot and heavy with their smell.<p>

* * *

><p>Three months. Lisbon and Van Pelt started going out to lunch, picking half-heartedly at salad and soup and tasteless, dry chicken.<p>

Van Pelt talked about everything in a soft, tired voice, her eyes peering scared from hollow, sunken eye sockets.

Lisbon didn't talk about anything, stabbing at her meal silently, ignoring the pain shooting up her shoulder. Oleanders bloomed wildly all around them, spilling from ledges, overflowing from pots. The air was thick and hazy with them.

After a while, silence fell between them. They didn't speak. They didn't need to. They understood each other perfectly.

* * *

><p><em>I can change him<em>, Lisbon used to think. _I can guide him, show him the way. _She'd set him straight again, turn him into a good man, heal him, mend him.

For a long time, she thought that he'd abandoned his ideas of revenge, that he'd outgrown them and seen the light, seen reason.

But Patrick Jane wasn't looking at her, at justice and truth and all she stood for.

He was looking at the hills tiger-striped with fire, seeing his house burn down and walls smiling and his wife's body, her toenails red and bloody. He was looking at Red John, and Lisbon didn't matter at all.

* * *

><p>"Seen Jane yet?" Rigsby looked everywhere but her face, staring hard at the pictures on the wall, the cushions on the couch. He was too big for her little world, shoulders hunched like a naughty little boy, head tucked down, awkward, shy.<p>

"No," said Lisbon, and she watched the news anchor talk about terrorism, the wars in the Middle East, more death, more destruction. A bottle of Percocet sits unopened on the table.

"Oh," Rigsby said. "Um, I brought you some take-out?"

"Thanks. Leave it on the table, would you?"

Rigsby did, and Lisbon heard the door close behind him on his way out.

_Seen Jane yet? _

Lisbon looked at the wall helplessly and said "how?"

* * *

><p>"I'll always protect you," he said once, the desert hot and dry in their mouths. "No matter what."<p>

She'd scoffed then because it was always she who saved him, who pulled him from the fire and kept him from bleeding out onto the stones. The idea of him saving her was ridiculous.

_You lied,_ she thinks now, staring out the window at Sacramento, lit with sirens. _You lied. How are you going to protect me now?_

She used to think that she would save him.

Now she thinks that he was too broken to try, and she presses her forehead to the window pane and tries to ignore the hurt alive and writhing in her chest.

* * *

><p>Three months and a week in, she went back to the CBI. Not to work—LaRoche wouldn't sign off, damn him, the <em>asshole<em>—but to just sit, and be there.

She learned that, two months ago when Jane quietly refused to post bail, Cho carefully packed all of Jane's things and put them in storage, even the couch. Precaution, he said. He'd done the same with Jane's hotel room.

Lisbon stared at the spot where his couch used to be and thought the office looks naked without it.

She went up into the attic and didn't come down for days.

* * *

><p>"Teresa," her mother said once, calling her over. She was twelve then, a bossy little girl, and her face was smeared with red marker, courtesy of her youngest brother. "Come here, Resa."<p>

She'd gone and her mother was beautiful in a red dress, the cloth spilling off her body easily, with the kind of natural grace some women would kill for. She was singing along to the radio and a single white oleander was tucked into her hair, lightning-white against the dark strands.

"Come here," she'd said, and she dropped gracefully to her knees and gave her daughter a hug. She smelled like perfume and oleander.

"Be good tonight," she'd warned. "Be nice to your brothers. You're alright watching them?"

Lisbon had rolled her eyes, giggling. "Yes, Mom."

"Good girl." She held on tight and Teresa felt her trembling slightly. "Oleander time," she whispered. "Watch out for fire tonight."

And then she laughed, light, happy, and walked out the door, and that was the last time anyone saw her alive.

* * *

><p>"Have you seen Jane yet?" Van Pelt's eyes were hollow and guarded, and she watched a bumblebee come and land lazily on the oleanders. Her salad was mostly untouched and her hair was the color of old fire.<p>

"No." Lisbon stared at her own uneaten food. Her shoulder throbbed. The bee left the oleander and landed on her plate, tasting the fresh fruit. She watched its miniscule antennae bob.

Van Pelt chewed her lip, emotion plain on her face. She always was an open book.

_Gotta hide yourself better, _Lisbon thought, watching the bee. It crawled towards her hand. _Can't show the world what you feel. _

She closed her eyes and saw blue eyes and a dazzling grin, heard Jane's tiger-growl voice. _You're an open book,_ he said. _Translucent. _

_What am I thinking now, _she challenged. _What am I thinking, Jane?_

"You should go," Grace said tentatively. "I think he's worried about you."

Lisbon watched the bumblebee and it crawled onto her hand, its antennae probing, poking. _Nothing sweet here, little bee. _

"No," she said flatly, and she crushed the bee in her palm, relishing the sharp sudden pain of its stinger, the flood of bee-poison into the wound.

The air smelled like oleanders, and Van Pelt never brought Jane up again.

* * *

><p>"He's bad news," Sam Bosco warned her, standing in the kitchenette. It was September then, the air hot and the Santa Anas roaring at the window. "You better watch out, Teresa. He'll get you in trouble, one of these days."<p>

"He's alright," Lisbon said. "He closes cases. He means well."

"Doesn't matter," said Sam. "He'll get you, in the end. He's not a detective. He's not a cop. He's not one of us."

"What is he then?" Lisbon asked, half-laughing.

Bosco wasn't laughing at all. "A victim," he said. "Patrick Jane is a victim."

* * *

><p>Jane came to her in the height of September, the wind in his hair and the scent of oleanders clinging to his skin.<p>

He arrived at the crime scene an hour after she told him to be there and he solved the case in six minutes, with the frightening, devastating ease with which he did everything.

He also got the killer shot (not fatally, fortunately, but still) and pissed off not one, not two, but _five _local cops, the mayor, half the news crew, and the grieving brother.

"What the hell was that?" Lisbon had hissed, shoving him aside roughly. The first of many, many Jane-induced migraines was building behind her eyes and the smoky scent of the air was making her slightly nauseous.

He shrugged, giving her the first of many, many bright grins. "Oleander time," he'd said, like the psychic he'd once pretended to be. "Fire and madness in the wind?"

She hit him.

* * *

><p>"Boss," says Cho, and he sits down on the dusty floor beside her, a box of Korean food in his lap. He offers her the chopsticks and she takes them half-heartedly, picks at the food.<p>

It's only because he does this for her that she's eating. She feels like she should do more, respond to him. Cho tries so hard. He really, really does. He shoulders the weight and doesn't complain, not even when she was cracked out on Percocet and mumbling about the oleanders burning on her wall.

"Cho."

They sit in silence and watch Sacramento at three in the morning, at the lights blue and red, the orange glow in the distance, the haze of smoke and the Santa Anas growling, clawing like tigers at the window.

"Today's the trial," Cho says, after what feels like forever.

Lisbon stares out the window.

"He says you haven't been to see him."

Lisbon looks at Cho then, long and hard. "I'm surprised you have."

"I go every week," says Cho.

"Why?" She can hear the haze of the oleanders in her own voice, the crackle of the fire, the roar of the Santa Anas. Californian September fury echoes in her voice and it scares her.

Cho givers her an inscrutable look, calm water to her fire. "He did the right thing," Cho says, and then he picks up what's left of the food and walks out the door.

* * *

><p>"Hey, Lisbon," Jane shouted, running to catch up to her. "Hey!"<p>

"What, Jane." She turned around, more amused than annoyed. It was a good day to be them. They weren't arguing, for once. Jane followed the rules this time and she let him do his thing, and they got their man and ended the case with pizza and beer.

Jane grinned at her, really fucking grinned, the one that lit him up and made small children stop crying and grumpy old men throw down their canes and dance in the streets.

Okay, so maybe she was a little drunk.

"For you," he said, and in his hand was a single white oleander, the leaves stark green, the petals lighting-white and perfect.

She laughed, surprised. "It's not gonna squirt me, is it?"

"Never," he said, and she smiled and took it, tucking in to her hair.

"What do you think?"

"Beautiful," he said, and he genuinely meant it. "Let me drive you home?"

She sighed and flapped her hand because she was drunk and in a good mood, and he gave her that damn grin again and bounced off to the car, stopping every now and then to look at the white oleander in her hair.

That night he drove her home and he went slow and careful, and she fell asleep pressed against the window and didn't feel it when he gently pulled the oleander from her hair.

It was on her nightstand when she woke up the next morning, its petals a little browner but still beautiful, on top of a hastily written note that said

_Breakfast is on the table. I got blueberry bagels and that cream cheese you like. No, not the raspberry kind, that's just wrong. The other kind, you know the one I mean. We're not on rotation today. Hightower let us off. Must be oleander time. Enjoy your vacation, don't even think about working._

_J. _

_P.S. Oleanders press well between crappy romance novels and cardboard. _

* * *

><p>Hail Mary, full of Grace.<p>

"Damn it, Jane," Lisbon whispers, her face pressed up against the glass, Sacramento spread wild and hot below her. "What are you doing to me?"

* * *

><p>Oleanders are the flowers of madness. They're beautiful but poisonous, toxic to the body. The smell of them is like a drug, dulls the mind, the senses. Oleanders eaten or brewed into a tea bring death, sometimes slowly, sometimes quickly, depending on the amount.<p>

Oleanders are the flowers of women, of lover's quarrels.

There was this one case, before Jane, of a woman who steeped oleander to kill her husband. She'll never forget the smell.

Oleanders are beautiful, but they are a flower that thrives in the time of the fires.

She cradles the oleander Jane gave her, loving pressed between crappy novels and cardboard, and she tastes the Santa Anas in the air.

Jane's crappy makeshift bed is rough and uncomfortable, but even after all these months it still smells like him, oleander and cologne and the faintest hint of bad dreams, and she settles in and closes her eyes, listening to the wind roar.

Dawn, fire-tipped, breaks over the city and the sirens, one by one, die out.

* * *

><p>"It's time," says Cho, and he's there and there's a look on his face she doesn't like.<p>

"Time for what?"

"The trial." Cho throws a nice outfit down on Jane's dusty makeshift bed.

"I'm not going."

"Yes you are."

"No."

"Yes," says Cho, and he gently pulls her to her feet.

"I can't," she whispers, clutching the pressed oleander tightly. "Cho, I can't."

"Hey," he says, looking her in the eye. "He needs you. We leave in ten minutes."

He leaves her in the attic and she dresses slowly, carefully, pulling on Agent Lisbon's clothes and skin, smoothing down her hair, flexing her shoulder. She looks at herself in the mirror in the bathroom down the hall. She looks like a different woman. Agent Lisbon crawled into a hole somewhere and died—this is Teresa, is fragile, is someone else entirely.

"You look good," Cho says approvingly. "Much better."

"Cho, I don't want to do this."

"He needs you," Cho repeats firmly, and he nudges her gently, guiding her in the direction of the doors.

When they reach the doors leading out, Lisbon stops. She can hear the Santa Anas roaring, feel the heat snarling and ripping at the world, calling the flames, driving them closer and closer to the heart of the city.

"Cho," she says, one last time, desperate, unsteady.

"Go," he says, and she looks into his solemn dark eyes. He opens the door and the heat crawls up her spine.

"Okay," Lisbon says, and she steps out into the heat.

* * *

><p>The Santa Anas killed her mother. She knew this at twelve, when her mom didn't come home and her dad crawled into a bottle.<p>

Oleander time, her mother had said. The time of madness and fire. Lovers who killed each other now blamed it on the wind.

"It was just a few drinks," the man who hit her mother said. "I only had a few. It was just so hot out, the wind, man, the Santa Anas. They were making my throat so dry."

* * *

><p>Lisbon and Cho drive straight and steady to the courthouse. There are reporters lined up out front, chattering to each other. Some of them praise Jane, others (most likely the ones he's harassed and pissed off before) call him a murderer, no better than any of the ones he's hunted down.<p>

Lisbon steps out of Cho's car and tries to put on Agent Lisbon's skin, to walk tall and proud and fierce.

"Easy, boss," Cho murmurs. Steady, faithful Cho, always at her side. "Just ignore them."

The reporters spot her immediately and rush towards her, shouting over one another like vultures that pick the bones of the animals killed in the fires.

"Agent Lisbon, how do you feel?"

"Did Patrick Jane really kill Red John?"

"Is it true you were having a sexual relationship?"

"Will Jane ever work with the CBI again?"

Lisbon ignores them, walking tall and proud. The smell of the Santa Anas, fire and oleander, is hot in her nose, heavy in her mouth. The fires have come closer than ever before—eco-nuts are crying global warming, religious nuts the end of the world, ghosts change and fire and oleander time.

"Agent Lisbon, is it true that you're in love with Patrick Jane?"

Lisbon turns and looks the reporter in the eye. "Go to hell," she says, and walks into the courthouse.

* * *

><p>Jane looks bad. He sits tame up at the defense table, listening absently to something his lawyer is saying. His eyes are cracked and almost gray in the lighting and he's pale, thinner than she's ever seen him. He's shaved recently and his hair is ridiculously curly as always, but there's something vital missing from him, something intangible.<p>

His eyes scan the crowd packing into the courthouse, reading life and death among the people there, the people smelling of oleander and ashes, the Santa Anas ruffling their hair.

He smiles when he spots Cho, waves a little at Van Pelt and Rigsby. He's not wearing handcuffs—they must consider him a low flight-risk.

Some public DA stands at the prosecutor's table. No one else is there. The wife of the man Jane killed sits in the front row, watching Jane with steely eyes.

Jane doesn't look at her. He searches the crowd and Lisbon ducks her head, refusing to meet his eyes.

"All rise," says the bailiff, and the judge enters the room.

"Let us begin," he says, and he sits down, banging his gavel three times.

* * *

><p>Boom. Boom. Boom.<p>

This is the way the world ends.

* * *

><p>"Patrick Jane," the judge says. "You are accused of killing a man in cold blood, in a public place, with an unregistered weapon. How do you plead?"<p>

Jane offers a slight, crooked smile and Lisbon closes her eyes. This is the real man—Consultant Jane is a sham, an act, a lie. Jane the psychic, the liar, the clever, cunning hero of the story, is dead. He crawled into a corner the night Red John murdered his family and died. This man, standing here with his crooked grin and cracked-open eyes, this man is Patrick.

Just Patrick.

Jane is dead, and she should have known it all along.

"Guilty."

Lisbon stands up and quietly leaves the room.

* * *

><p>After that, it's over. The trial lasts seventeen days, well into October. The Santa Anas keep roaring, scratching at her windows, driving the fire into the oleanders.<p>

She stays up in the attic and won't leave for anyone, not Rigsby, not Van Pelt, not Hightower or LaRoche or Bertram. Not even Cho, loyal, faithful, steady Cho.

The oleanders slowly whither and die, turning to dust, and Lisbon stands with her forehead pressed to the glass, watching Sacramento glow red and blue below her.

There's a knock on the door.

"Boss," says Cho.

She doesn't answer, thinks about taking some of the Percocets in the bottle on the table or just curling up in the makeshift bed and cradling the dried oleander, watching dust swirl lazily around the room.

"Jury reached a verdict," Cho says. "Jane's coming back."

"They let him off?" The words, strained, tumble from her mouth before she can stop them.

"He's on probation. But yeah, the jury ruled it justifiable homicide. Red John had a gun."

"We don't even know if it is Red John!" Anger, hot like the winds, bubbles out, splashes to the floor. She's so, so angry.

"Jane's sure."

Lisbon laughs and the sound is broken glass, jagged in her throat.

"Peter Holbrook knew how his daughter smelled," Cho says lowly. "We heard the tape. He was taunting Jane, hurting him. He was Red John, Lisbon. He said it himself."

Lisbon shook her head slightly, angry, hurt, confused. Her shoulder throbbed and her chest felt like it was full of holes. "Why would Red John do that?"

"Dunno. He was arrogant, maybe, he wanted Jane to kill him, I don't know. But he was Red John. I'm sure of it, the jury's sure of it, hell, even his widow's convinced."

Lisbon stared at the lights flashing blue and red, the hills tipped with fire.

"How can you be so sure?" She whispers, and Cho doesn't hear her. He walks away back down the stairs, and Lisbon watches the hills burn and burn and can't take it anymore.

* * *

><p>There's a bar about three blocks from the CBI that's half-off for cops. The bartender doesn't ask questions. He takes one look at her and sees what she is<p>

(How do I look like a cop? She asked, half-laughing, and Jane turned to grin at her.

It's all over you, my dear Lisbon. Even a toddler could see it.)

and pours the first beer.

After that it gets a little blurry.

Somewhere around round seven—or eight—or maybe eleven, she's sort of forgotten how to count at this point—somebody sits in the seat next to her. She can't see him. Or her. Or them. She can't really see at all.

_Oh, _she thinks. _This is what blind stinking drunk is. _

"Who are you?" She asks, except it comes out as "whrya?"

The person says something to the bartender in a warm tiger-growling voice and hands—she thinks they're hands, either that or she's being lifted by tele-fucking-kinesis (and she's drunk enough to accept that, at this point)—pick her up. A shoulder offers her support and together she and this mystery person (serial killer? red john lackey? cho?) walk out of the bar.

The Santa Anas punch her in the mouth and she coughs, swallowing oleander and fire. The tiger-voice says something softly, too softly for her drunk ears to hear. More hands, patting, guiding, and they're stumbling along. She hears sirens, _wooo, wooo, wooo_, and the howling wind, and flames dance behind her closed eyelids and O'Laughlin cocks his gun, Jane beams at her, offers her an oleander.

"Leave me the fuck alone," she says. It comes out "lvm't'fck'lne" but she hopes the other person gets the message.

More walking. There's more talking and the click of doors, and cooler fire-less air. Walking, and the rattle of something—an elevator, maybe?—then more walking and talking, and then stairs.

The stairs suck.

She fucking hates stairs.

The creak of a door, a soft grunt, the smell of dust and rotting oleander. Soft beneath her, the hands smoothing back hair, pulling up the blanket.

"Leave me alone," she murmurs, and then the tide of alcoholic sleep, the one kind of sleep she can always count on, comes roaring up and swallows her whole.

"Okay," someone says, very clearly, and she's gone.

* * *

><p>"Jane," she says, and she opens her eyes and she's standing in a field of wildflowers. Oleander shrubs bloom thick and wild, so strong they clog her throat.<p>

"Hello." He smiles at her. He's wearing a black vest and his white shirt glows, almost, like moonlight. He has the face of a man who's been in prison, of the man who stood and pled guilty. He has Patrick's face. Jane the Consultant is gone.

"I brought you this." There's a single oleander in his hand, lightning-white and beautiful.

"Jane," she says softly, words like broken glass jagged in her mouth. "Oh, Jane."

He smiles again, Patrick's crooked, slipping grin. "Sorry," he says. He holds the oleander out to her. "I didn't mean to hurt you."

"Damn it, Jane." Something's building in her chest, hot and hard and so heavy she thinks her ribs must break under the weight of it. "What are you doing to me?"

"I'm so sorry," he says in his tiger-growl voice, soft and slow and steady. "It wasn't because of you, okay? It was never because of you. I had to kill him. I had to."

"You _lied _to me!" She shouts, and she wants something to throw, to hit him with, to _hurt_ him—

"It wasn't your fault." His eyes are cracked and gray in the light and his voice is echoing, fading, going down a long dark tunnel and never coming back. "I'm so sorry."

"You promised!" She screams, and the sound and the Santa Anas tear from her throat. "You promised—"

(_you'd save me, protect me, always be here with me_)

"And now you're not! _Damn it, Jane!"_

"Sorry," he whispers, the Santa Anas pulling at his hair. "So sorry."

He bursts into flames, the fire licking his legs, his face, his eyes. The field around them smells of haze and oleander, and one hand is outstretched to her, a single lightning-white flower catching flame, and then he burns and burns and burns and he's gone.

* * *

><p>Lisbon wakes up and promptly vomits. There's nothing in her stomach but she heaves anyway, head pounding, heart on fire, Jane burning imprinted on the back of her eyes.<p>

"Jesus," she chokes.

Ouch.

She hasn't been this drunk for years.

It takes her several minutes to get herself back together, the haze of alcohol and dreams pounding in her blood.

_Damn it, Jane… _

It's not until much, much later that she sees the single lightning-white oleander sitting on top of the table, next to the bottle of Percocet. There's a note written in familiar, slanting scrawl.

_I'm sorry. _

_J. _

Lisbon stares at it for what feels like hours, and then she pops a single white pill and very, very calmly throws a chair through the window.

* * *

><p>After that, it's a haze. She calms down, apologizes to LaRoche, and goes home. Two weeks later she's cleared for duty and calls her boys back again, and SCU starts over.<p>

They do small cases first, drug-related crimes, mostly, easing their way back into their selves and murder.

She learns how to put Agent Lisbon's skin on all the time, how to hide what hurts so very badly. They start closing cases again, not as many as before but still, it's a start.

Van Pelt comes back in January, harder than before, her hair the color of old fire and with a steel that Lisbon didn't know she had.

Rigsby moons after her—he'll _always _moon after her—but does his job. He'll wait for Van Pelt forever, Lisbon knows, until the fires sweep down and burn them alive. That's the kind of man he is.

Cho is Cho, loyal, steady, always at her side. He'll always be there, she knows this too. That's the kind of man he is.

No one hears from Jane. January turns to March, which turns to April, which turns to May. Lisbon visits Peter Holbrook's—Red John's—grave and isn't all that surprised to find a single white oleander already there.

June. A bouquet of roses for Angela Jane and a teddy bear and vibrant carnations for Charlotte. Lisbon pays her respects and goes home that night, turning the dried oleanders over and over in her hands.

July. Murder, and lots of it. The SCU is mostly healed now, closing most of their cases, not as fast as they used to, but still, it's a start. They're learning how to walk again.

August is hot and uneventful. Van Pelt and Rigsby start sleeping together. LaRoche comes into the bullpen once, perhaps to reprimand them, but Cho hands him a letter (which the bulldog of a man reads while steadily turning paler) and LaRoche never brings it up again. Cho burns the letter and Lisbon never asks who it was from.

September. The Santa Anas return even stronger than last year and the hills turn orange and brown with fire.

Hail Mary, full of Grace. Oleander time.

Lisbon stands alone up in the attic and watches Sacramento pulse orange, red, and blue below her. Jane's makeshift bed no longer smells like him—it's all dust now. A thick layer of it covers everything.

"Damn it, Jane," she says. The Percocet lies on the table, untouched. Her shoulder's mostly stopped hurting but her chest hasn't. She doesn't think it ever will.

Her cell phone rings, once, twice. She ignores it. It's too late to talk with people.

The door creaks open and the smell of oleanders rushes in.

Lisbon turns around. "Jane," she says evenly.

"Hello." His voice is rough and tiger-deep, a soft growl in a dusty room. The Santa Anas are in his hair, his eyes, and he's still prison-skinny, his vest and shirt rumpled. He hasn't shaved in a few days and his eyes are so blue they're almost green.

"Why are you here?" There's no glass in her voice now, just dried-up oleanders.

He shrugs. "I missed you," he says. "I missed this."

"You left."

"You told me to leave." He flashes her a crooked, broken grin. She regards him coolly. In the months since she last saw him, she learned how to put on Agent Lisbon again but he didn't learn how to put Jane the Consultant, the Asshole, the Man with the Plan, back on.

She looks at him and doesn't think Jane the Asshole would fit him, now. He's too small.

The sight of him, the smell, is enough to make her heart hurt.

"Damn it, Jane."

"I know," he says, stepping cautiously closer. The Santa Anas roar outside, tigers prowling the night, flames in their jaws. "Cho told me."

She laughs bitterly. "Good ol' Cho."

He's so close now that she can see tiny scars cut into his face, little white crescent moons. She wonders where he got them.

"I had to leave for awhile," he says. "Sort everything out. I went to see the Ruskins, my father, some old friends. Everyone says I did the right thing."

"Are you happy now?" She can't muster up the energy to yell it. "Did killing him make it better?"

"I'm not happy," he murmurs. He's so close, in her space, oleander and fire clinging to his skin. "I'm sorry, Lisbon. I'm so sorry."

"Jane," she says. "Look at me. Did killing him. Make. It. Better."

He looks into her eyes and she sees the answer.

"Yes," he says simply.

She nods, tired now, too tired, more tired than she's ever been before. "Okay," she says. "Are you staying?"

"Do you want me to?"

"Why does my opinion matter?" Old fire now, rushing to her defense. She's sliding on Agent Lisbon's skin and he won't be able to touch her. "Everyone else says you did the right thing. You got your revenge. What do you need me for?"

"Look at me." He takes her face into his hands and his palms are rougher than she would've thought. "Teresa, look at me."

She does, all the way into his cracked eyes.

"You're opinion matters. It's the only one that matters. Do you want me back?"

Her lip trembles. Her chest hurts, it's heaving, heavy, she's going to break, it's going to break, all of it is going to fucking break.

Years are carved into his skin next to the little crescent moon scars. His sleeves are rolled back and she sees another scar on his wrist, long and pale, and one winks at her from just below his hairline.

So many scars.

His eyes are deep and sad and Patrick offers her a crooked grin that makes her want to take him into her arms and never ever let him go.

"Do you want me to stay?"

She remembers him on fire in a field, oleander held outstretched between them. She remembers her mother stroking her hair, whispering of oleander and fire in the hills, singing along to the radio. She remembers Sam Bosco with a sandwich halfway to his mouth and Craig O'Laughlin holding a gun, coughing red-rose blood.

So many scars.

She should take a marker and trace them, mapping them out on his skin, on hers. What would they reveal, these scars? Hidden treasure or just empty caves?

"Do you want me to stay?" Patrick Jane whispers, and she smells the Santa Anas on his skin.

She looks up into his deep, cracked eyes.

"Yes," she whispers back, and he laughs and crushes her to his chest, and she laughs too, hiccupping, heaving sobs that soak through his vest while he strokes her hair. "Don't think this means you're totally forgiven."

"I know. Must be oleander time," he murmurs against the soft skin of her neck.

"Fire and madness in the wind," she says, and she kisses him.

He doesn't taste like oleander, like she thought he would. He tastes like tea and mint, not a trace of poisonous flower anywhere, and she's so relieved it hurts.

"Come on," she says, and she pulls him down onto the makeshift crate bed, his hands (or his tele-fucking-kinesis) everywhere, soft-rough like tiger pads, his voice growling in her ear, his hair in her hands, his lips on hers, and she holds him inside her and grabs his shoulders like she's never, ever going to let him go.

"Never do that to me again," she gasps. "Never."

"I promise," he gasps back. "Never again."

* * *

><p>"Damn it, Jane," she murmurs the next morning, dawn breaking over the city, the sirens dying one by one. "What are you doing to me?"<p>

He smiles against her neck and gropes blindly for his discarded vest, muttering something in some lilting fire-language against her skin.

"Here," he says softly, propping himself up on one elbow. A single lightning-white oleander rests in his open palm.

She looks at him solemnly. "Never again," she warns.

"Never," Patrick agrees, and there's not a trace of Jane the Liar anywhere.

She smiles and takes the flower, tucking it into her hair. "How do I look?" She asks.

"Beautiful," he says.

"Oleanders are poisonous, you know."

He smiles then, genuine, honest-to-God _smiles_, and every person within a ten-mile radius probably felt the psychic force of his happiness and burst out laughing. "Don't go eating them then."

She grins back and flips him over, settling onto his chest. "I promise," she whispers.

"Good," he whispers back, hands wandering expertly. She laughs and smacks them away. "Listen," he says. "Can you hear that?"

She does, and she shrugs. "It's just the Santa Anas," she says.

"No." Patrick Jane smiles even wider now, beaming. "Lisbon, it's raining."

* * *

><p><strong>Sorry I got kind of heavy on the symbolism. Er hur hur. Damn NyQuil.<strong>

**~WSS**


End file.
